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By derivation from that Authentic Kosmos, one within itself,
there subsists this lower kosmos, no longer a true unity.
It is multiple, divided into various elements, thing standing
apart from thing in a new estrangement. No longer is there
concord unbroken; hostility, too, has entered as the result of
difference and distance; imperfection has inevitably introduced
discord; for a part is not self-sufficient, it must pursue
something outside itself for its fulfillment, and so it becomes
the enemy to what it needs.
This Kosmos of parts has come into being not as the result of a
judgement establishing its desirability, but by the sheer
necessity of a secondary Kind.
The Intellectual Realm was not of a nature to be the ultimate of
existents. It was the First and it held great power, all there is
of power; this means that it is productive without seeking to
produce; for if effort and search were incumbent upon it, the Act
would not be its own, would not spring from its essential nature;
it would be, like a craftsman, producing by a power not inherent
but acquired, mastered by dint of study.
The Intellectual Principle, then, in its unperturbed serenity has
brought the universe into being, by communicating from its own
store to Matter: and this gift is the Reason-Form flowing from
it. For the Emanation of the Intellectual Principle is Reason, an
emanation unfailing as long as the Intellectual Principle
continues to have place among beings.
The Reason-Principle within a seed contains all the parts and
qualities concentrated in identity; there is no distinction, no
jarring, no internal hindering; then there comes a pushing out
into bulk, part rises in distinction with part, and at once the
members of the organism stand in each other's way and begin to
wear each other down.
So from this, the One Intellectual Principle, and the Reason-Form
emanating from it, our Universe rises and develops part, and
inevitably are formed groups concordant and helpful in contrast
with groups discordant and combative; sometimes of choice and
sometimes incidentally, the parts maltreat each other;
engendering proceeds by destruction.
Yet: Amid all that they effect and accept, the divine Realm
imposes the one harmonious act; each utters its own voice, but
all is brought into accord, into an ordered system, for the
universal purpose, by the ruling Reason-Principle. This Universe
is not Intelligence and Reason, like the Supernal, but
participant in Intelligence and Reason: it stands in need of the
harmonizing because it is the meeting ground of Necessity and
divine Reason-Necessity pulling towards the lower, towards the
unreason which is its own characteristic, while yet the
Intellectual Principle remains sovereign over it.
The Intellectual Sphere [the Divine] alone is Reason, and there
can never be another Sphere that is Reason and nothing else; so
that, given some other system, it cannot be as noble as that
first; it cannot be Reason: yet since such a system cannot be
merely Matter, which is the utterly unordered, it must be a mixed
thing. Its two extremes are Matter and the Divine Reason; its
governing principle is Soul, presiding over the conjunction of
the two, and to be thought of not as labouring in the task but as
administering serenely by little more than an act of presence.
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